XL Pipeline Decision: The Good, Bad, and Very Ugly

I rise to applaud the apparent decision to re-route the XL pipeline, the oil-product superhighway that was going to reach from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. It's a triumph for environmental activists whose opposition provoked a demonstration against it last weekend big enough to surround the White House, not bad, considering that the whole sorry deal was completely off the radar for an awfully long time. This thing started out as a deal between Trans-Canada, the pipeline's owner, and the State Department. The first I heard about it was in Florida, when the various Republican presidential candidates pledged everlasting fealty to it. (Thanks, folks!) Michele Bachmann was a particular fan, and Herman Cain sounded like he'd like to go out there and start laying some pipe himself, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

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However, as more and more details about the project became available, it became clear that this had all the earmarks of what happens when politicians and the extraction industries get within 100 miles of each other, including a dubious approval process, wildly overinflated claims of job creation, and outright lying. The Republican-dominated unicameral state legislature of Nebraska is pushing through a bill that would give the governor there the power to decide on pipeline routes, clearly intending to give him the power to re-route the XL pipeline away from both the state's environmentally delicate Sand Hills region, and away from the Ogallala aquifer, the source of water for 33 percent of the country's arable farmland. Trans-Canada has chimed in with some whining.

Quoth Ken Haar, the Nebraska state legislator who proposed the bill:

"I call those crocodile tears," he said. "We don't owe them that. Nebraskans shouldn't have to make their business plan work."